(no subject)
Who: Damian Wayne
What: The Great Adventure (aka Kidnapped By Strange Forces and DITCHED!)
When: Today.
Where: Off in the Dead Zone, to the South.
Rating: PG.
Day One (Tuesday, Nov. 9th.)
Damian didn't sleep very well that night, if at all. It felt like the moment he fell asleep, he was already waking up. As a result, the first thing that registered in his mind was the notion that time felt like it passed impossibly fast when he was sleeping. The second was that he was laying in grass and his head was on a rock, rather than on a down pillow.
Naturally, the third thought was something along the lines of "this is stupid." He said as much aloud, too, as he climbed to his feet. His knee felt a little stiff, and after tugging up the leg of his pants, he realized he had a wicked bruise there. That certainly hadn't been there before. After a bit more inspection, he found he had several new marks, and the back of his head felt swollen and sore. Had he been knocked out?
All around him was a landscape of grassy steppe, though perhaps steppe wasn't the right word. The plains had odd crags here and there, like the entire place had been shaken up by an earthquake long ago and the pieces had never quite settled again. The odd trees were old and jagged looking, definitely unusual for this kind of terrain. And, worst yet, a sunrise.
So he really had barely slept at all.
Damn.
He gave the place a three-sixty of observation. Even when he turned, he seemed to instinctively know which way the castle was. This confused Damian, as he hadn't been conscious to note footsteps or direction changes in their course of travel. Perhaps it was just the castle's way of ensuring its travelers got home, or perhaps he had gone crazy, but either way, Damian was glad he had it. If he didn't get back within the day, or even then, he would probably catch cold. Maybe even hypothermia, if the temperature dropped enough.
It was probably somewhere around six degrees Celsius. That was awful close to freezing, and he counted himself lucky that he'd worn a hoodie and socks to bed. Those socks, once pure white, were already stained from standing in the dirt and grass.
He took a few experimental steps in the direction of the castle. Was this where Dick had been? Was he still out here somewhere?
Tucking his chin a little further into his hoodie's collar and tugging the cuffs of his sleeves down to wind them around his fingers, Damian started walking.
"Well," he announced to no one in particular, "If I could make it from the Australian Outback to Hong Kong to Gotham City, this'll be nothing."
Even so, he had to admit that he'd had shoes, then.
He'd been walking for two hours when he came across the Lump.
It was about fifty yards away when he stopped, though he'd seen it from further back. Given that it was white and more like a giant pile of fur than anything else, he decided to give it a bit more caution than he'd given a dozen similar-sized rocks in that hour.
"What are you?" he asked, as he moved a bit closer.
The Lump did not move. Damian watched it for a moment before moving a bit closer. At ten feet, he could see the Lump was breathing, with big breaths that made its "back" rise and fall, and its fur wave around. Whatever it was, it was shaggy like a sheepdog, with longer fur on top and shorter fur around the edges.
"Hey," Damian said. "Wake up."
It occurred to him that it might be dangerous, but Damian had never heard that "let sleeping dogs lie" adage and he wasn't about to ignore the existence of some big creepy furry thing in the middle of nowhere. After all, wasn't Dick always talking at length about being a detective and improving those skills?
Besides, his socks were getting threadbare and his feet were starting to hurt. He could use a break.
From a nearby tree he retrieved a branch, deciding it was better to poke it from a bit more of a distance than it was to get real close. With the branch in both hands he reached out to give the Lump a jab.
It didn't move.
He jabbed again.
This time he got a sleepy grumble in reply.
He was just about to jab it again when it swung its shaggy head up and looked Damian's way, and he dropped the branch with a clatter and scrambled back a few paces. Mercifully, no one was there to see that, nor hear the "eep" he let out.
The Lump was ugly. The long white mane started at its brow, past a wild tuft of shorter white hair bumping right up against its eyelids, and it had two clouds of white hair on its cheeks, but otherwise its face was bald. It had a rather humanoid bulbous nose, but its eyes were round with a goat's horizontal pupils.
"What ARE you?" he demanded.
The Lump just stared.
"Other than ugly, I mean," Damian replied. "If a rhinoceros procreated with a sheep dog, that would be you."
The Lump let out a whuff of air, and its long beards of white fur trembled. Damian shifted to the other foot, and after giving the Lump's jaw a long look, he determined it was probably a herbivore.
"Or maybe just a sheep. You have the same poofy hair."
There was another pause of silence, and then Damian scoffed.
"Tt. Well, goodbye."
He started walking again, and the creature just watched.
Damian didn't notice the Lump was following him for a grand total of thirty five minutes, when he happened to look behind him. Really, why else would he look back? The only thing behind him was the Lump, and judging by that thing's shoulders and build, it wouldn't be quiet.
Except it was.
Standing up, the Lump had a tank-like body and short, stumpy legs, with weird clawed feet. It's chest and underside were hairless, save more wild tufts of sheeplike fleece around its armpits and shoulders.
It was the ugliest creature Damian had ever seen, and likely ever would see.
"Other than Stephanie," he remarked to himself, out loud, though he continued to walk. The Lump plodded after him, slowly, and had it not been big enough to cover six of Damian's steps in each step, Damian would have easily lost it in no time.
Apparently, Paradisa saw fit that he had company.
"You know," he said, "you're going to regret following me around when I get hungry and cook you for dinner, because I am NOT eating grass."
At the six hour mark, Damian stopped and sat down in the grass with a loud sigh. That damned Lump was still following him, too, for some reason he didn't quite understand. Damian didn't relax until the Lump settled down under the nearest tree, worried that the Lump would keep plodding on and step on him.
"I would tolerate you if you could talk," Damian said, bossily, pulling off his sock to inspect the damage to his foot. Calluses were already beginning to build, and though he'd done a good job picking around the rock to walk though thickest patches of grass, he was getting out of the grassy region and had a stretch of rocky crags against him. If he was lucky, he could scale them no problem, but it still wasn't going to be any nicer on his feet.
"What's your deal, anyway?" Damian asked, chancing a sniff at his sock. Eeugh. He stuffed it in his pocket and pulled off the other. "Is it because I'm talking to you? Are you just lonely? Then you shouldn't have decided to live in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, Lump."
He scrounged around the area for a bit more to see if he could find any food, but save grass and a few sketchy looking unknown berries on a bushel, there was nothing to be found. He tried to feed the Lump some of the berries, but when the Lump refused, he decided it wasn't worth the risk that they were poisonous. He did manage to scrounge some rainwater from a creek, though, and despite the unfiltered taste, it was better than nothing.
"If I were as ugly as you, I would exile myself, too, though."
Damian scowled, putting his horrible socks back on.
"I'll keep that in mind as a suggestion for Stephanie. You two may be related."
The Lump gave another whuff, climbing to its feet.
"That's what I thought."
And on the one-sided conversation went.
To Damian's disappointment the Lump had managed the crags better than he did; despite its short legs, it was apparently very capable of climbing up the rocky surfaces, and Damian was often forced to look up to see the Lump looking down at him. Damian found it condescending, and he informed the Lump of it.
"I'm going to push you off the cliff if you keep doing that," Damian replied.
By evening, the temperature was dropping. Damian thought his toes might be falling off or at least changing colour, but upon checking they didn't look too different. His fingers were a different story; despite pulling his arms into the chest of the hoodie and folding them across his body, tucking his hands in his armpits, they looked off and felt stiff. The breeze kept catching his hood and trying to push it off his head, and with his arms in his hoodie, it wasn't easy to try and right it.
"From now on I'm sleeping in a parka and boots, in case this EVER happens again," he complained, though he kept on going.
At one point, he gave up walking and attempted to climb onto the Lump's back, thinking if it hadn't attempted to kill him yet it was docile enough to ride, but after a half-dozen failed attempts Damian decided it was a lost cause. Clearly the animal was too stupid, and probably wouldn't go in the right direction anyway.
"If Mother controlled this world, she would have left a motorbike or a jet in the region so I wouldn't have to walk it," Damian informed the Lump. "One that works in the Dead Zone. But who cares now? I might die out here and it's all your fault."
Just before night fell, Damian decided to risk the cold and stop, seeing as his only other option was walking barefoot in the dark. He found an area with a couple rocks that could block out most of the wind, and with some branches and twigs from some nearby trees, he managed to make a small campfire. He found a nest in the tree, but there were no eggs in it, so that was useless. With the Lump curled up a dozen feet away, Damian settled down in the dirt and curled up for warmth, cursing the big furry moron for not being his giant pillow.
"Not that I'd sleep on a giant fleabitten nag anyway," Damian growled, shivering.
Day Two (Wednesday, Nov. 10th.)
Luckily, he lived to see dawn. Even luckier, he decided, was that the Lump had disappeared, and he was now free to talk to himself, rather than to a big ugly llama-rhinoceros-sheep creature.
"Good riddance," he announced to his campsite, poking at the cold ashes of the fire with a stick before twisting his socks around so the tops were on the bottom, and the hole-stricken bottoms were on the top. "I never liked you anyway."
A couple hours past morning, he had found another creek, and had successfully caught himself a fish from it, using only a bit of stealth and a stick he'd sharpened by breaking it off a tree at an angle. The fish was bright blue and skinny, but it tasted okay once cooked, despite being a little ashy and bland. It certainly wasn't Count Chocula or an omelette or sausages, though, and Damian was pretty bitter about that.
He spent most of the early afternoon in silence, save the odd shouted complaint to the sky of "I HATE THIS PLACE" or "YOU ALL SUCK" or "THIS IS THE STUPIDEST THING EVER."
It felt cathartic, especially when he wanted nothing more than to climb into his actual bed, have some real food, and see some real people.
By evening he was sufficiently bored of the same kind of landscapes, as beautiful as they supposedly were, and his feet were close to bloody at this point. He just wanted to kill something out of frustration.
That's when he saw the guy in the Iron suit.
Damian ducked under the shade of the nearest crag, moving a bit faster than he should have over the rocks. Crouched in the shadow with his head low, he peered up at the Ironman flying overhead. Male, he decided, given the stature and size. He could hear some sort of communication going on, but with the distance between them and the sound of the repulsers, Damian wasn't sure what was being said.
Even so, he hoped he didn't find out, if it meant not getting in a scrap with the Ironman.
But, luckily for Damian, the Ironman kept flying on after circling the region once. He waited an extra few minutes, anyhow, partially to let the Ironman get out of the region, and also to strip off his hoodie and his t-shirt. The hoodie went back on, and he tore the t-shirt up into strips to make bandages for his feet.
"Could have offered a ride," Damian growled, watching the white fabric turn red under his heel and the balls of his feet. He wrapped an extra layer of t-shirt on top of that. "And people think I'm rude."
Truth be told, Damian didn't know where the border was in relation to him, so he wasn't sure when he crossed it, but as night fell and he was faced with a small mountain range, he was hoping it was the one that divided him from the castle.
It wasn't. After one grueling hour in near-darkness, carefully climbing the rock face, he found himself looking down into more fields, stretching on for what looked like an eternity.
He let out a growl of frustration. There was nothing up there to make a campfire with, and no shelter, so he was forced to spent another hour working his way down the other side. Once there he was so exhausted and dehydrated that he felt lightheaded, and he just nodded off to sleep in the long grass at the bottom of the foothills.
Day Three (Thursday, Nov. 11th.)
Damian awoke come sunrise, and though exhaustion had allowed him to claim a good number of hours of sleep, it certainly hadn't been comfortable, nor restful.
After laying there and staring at the sky for a bit, he forced himself to sit up. If he didn't find another source of water soon he was going to collapse. He could do without food, as long as he could find water.
His mind was beginning to feel dull. He sat there for another moment, going over possible survival plans, and then realized that his sleeve was red. For one panicked, mind-rushed second he thought he was bleeding, but then he realized it was darker, and mottled, like he'd just laid down in something.
And he had. Closer inspection to the ground showed him the entire ground at the base of the grass' roots was covered in a fine dark red powder.
Like the powder in the region around Paradisa.
Had he managed to get across the border after all?
"Perfect," Damian mumbled, climbing to his feet entirely and shuffling back towards the foothills. Morning dew would leave the rocks of the mountains wet, and if he was lucky, some of it would pool. Grasshoppers bounded by his feet as he cut through the grass, and for a second he was tempted to eat them for a bit of sustenance, though he realized the energy he'd expend trying to catch them wasn't worth the pay-off.
(Good, too, because that was disgusting.)
The rocks' crevices yielded enough water to keep him alive and conscious, though Damian knew it wouldn't be enough overall. By time he'd found a few places with little puddles of water and slicked some out of a couple plants, the sun was already rising in the sky and he knew the rest would be drying up in no time. He had to keep moving, and hopefully build another fire to send up smoke with, though the area was still so damp and slim on trees that he doubted he'd be able to start a fire, let alone make it big enough to create something noticeable.
"Dear Paradisa," he dictated to himself, despite not having a journal. "You really need to stop doing stupid things like this, or else you need to kick out the creeps you're filling this place with. I would rather take on every villain in this place with a TOOTHPICK than play this stupid game."
And that was true.
Damian was almost at a limp when noon rolled around, and every muscle in his body ached, and he was tired, and hungry, and thirsty, and all those complaints one generally has when they're on day three of the great walk back. He'd covered somewhere between sixty-five and seventy miles, he guessed, and in good time.
Even though it took up precious energy, he shouted out, just for the sake of it:
"AM I THERE YET?"
Given the open air and fields ahead of him, no. He wasn't.
What then?
What: The Great Adventure (aka Kidnapped By Strange Forces and DITCHED!)
When: Today.
Where: Off in the Dead Zone, to the South.
Rating: PG.
Day One (Tuesday, Nov. 9th.)
Damian didn't sleep very well that night, if at all. It felt like the moment he fell asleep, he was already waking up. As a result, the first thing that registered in his mind was the notion that time felt like it passed impossibly fast when he was sleeping. The second was that he was laying in grass and his head was on a rock, rather than on a down pillow.
Naturally, the third thought was something along the lines of "this is stupid." He said as much aloud, too, as he climbed to his feet. His knee felt a little stiff, and after tugging up the leg of his pants, he realized he had a wicked bruise there. That certainly hadn't been there before. After a bit more inspection, he found he had several new marks, and the back of his head felt swollen and sore. Had he been knocked out?
All around him was a landscape of grassy steppe, though perhaps steppe wasn't the right word. The plains had odd crags here and there, like the entire place had been shaken up by an earthquake long ago and the pieces had never quite settled again. The odd trees were old and jagged looking, definitely unusual for this kind of terrain. And, worst yet, a sunrise.
So he really had barely slept at all.
Damn.
He gave the place a three-sixty of observation. Even when he turned, he seemed to instinctively know which way the castle was. This confused Damian, as he hadn't been conscious to note footsteps or direction changes in their course of travel. Perhaps it was just the castle's way of ensuring its travelers got home, or perhaps he had gone crazy, but either way, Damian was glad he had it. If he didn't get back within the day, or even then, he would probably catch cold. Maybe even hypothermia, if the temperature dropped enough.
It was probably somewhere around six degrees Celsius. That was awful close to freezing, and he counted himself lucky that he'd worn a hoodie and socks to bed. Those socks, once pure white, were already stained from standing in the dirt and grass.
He took a few experimental steps in the direction of the castle. Was this where Dick had been? Was he still out here somewhere?
Tucking his chin a little further into his hoodie's collar and tugging the cuffs of his sleeves down to wind them around his fingers, Damian started walking.
"Well," he announced to no one in particular, "If I could make it from the Australian Outback to Hong Kong to Gotham City, this'll be nothing."
Even so, he had to admit that he'd had shoes, then.
He'd been walking for two hours when he came across the Lump.
It was about fifty yards away when he stopped, though he'd seen it from further back. Given that it was white and more like a giant pile of fur than anything else, he decided to give it a bit more caution than he'd given a dozen similar-sized rocks in that hour.
"What are you?" he asked, as he moved a bit closer.
The Lump did not move. Damian watched it for a moment before moving a bit closer. At ten feet, he could see the Lump was breathing, with big breaths that made its "back" rise and fall, and its fur wave around. Whatever it was, it was shaggy like a sheepdog, with longer fur on top and shorter fur around the edges.
"Hey," Damian said. "Wake up."
It occurred to him that it might be dangerous, but Damian had never heard that "let sleeping dogs lie" adage and he wasn't about to ignore the existence of some big creepy furry thing in the middle of nowhere. After all, wasn't Dick always talking at length about being a detective and improving those skills?
Besides, his socks were getting threadbare and his feet were starting to hurt. He could use a break.
From a nearby tree he retrieved a branch, deciding it was better to poke it from a bit more of a distance than it was to get real close. With the branch in both hands he reached out to give the Lump a jab.
It didn't move.
He jabbed again.
This time he got a sleepy grumble in reply.
He was just about to jab it again when it swung its shaggy head up and looked Damian's way, and he dropped the branch with a clatter and scrambled back a few paces. Mercifully, no one was there to see that, nor hear the "eep" he let out.
The Lump was ugly. The long white mane started at its brow, past a wild tuft of shorter white hair bumping right up against its eyelids, and it had two clouds of white hair on its cheeks, but otherwise its face was bald. It had a rather humanoid bulbous nose, but its eyes were round with a goat's horizontal pupils.
"What ARE you?" he demanded.
The Lump just stared.
"Other than ugly, I mean," Damian replied. "If a rhinoceros procreated with a sheep dog, that would be you."
The Lump let out a whuff of air, and its long beards of white fur trembled. Damian shifted to the other foot, and after giving the Lump's jaw a long look, he determined it was probably a herbivore.
"Or maybe just a sheep. You have the same poofy hair."
There was another pause of silence, and then Damian scoffed.
"Tt. Well, goodbye."
He started walking again, and the creature just watched.
Damian didn't notice the Lump was following him for a grand total of thirty five minutes, when he happened to look behind him. Really, why else would he look back? The only thing behind him was the Lump, and judging by that thing's shoulders and build, it wouldn't be quiet.
Except it was.
Standing up, the Lump had a tank-like body and short, stumpy legs, with weird clawed feet. It's chest and underside were hairless, save more wild tufts of sheeplike fleece around its armpits and shoulders.
It was the ugliest creature Damian had ever seen, and likely ever would see.
"Other than Stephanie," he remarked to himself, out loud, though he continued to walk. The Lump plodded after him, slowly, and had it not been big enough to cover six of Damian's steps in each step, Damian would have easily lost it in no time.
Apparently, Paradisa saw fit that he had company.
"You know," he said, "you're going to regret following me around when I get hungry and cook you for dinner, because I am NOT eating grass."
At the six hour mark, Damian stopped and sat down in the grass with a loud sigh. That damned Lump was still following him, too, for some reason he didn't quite understand. Damian didn't relax until the Lump settled down under the nearest tree, worried that the Lump would keep plodding on and step on him.
"I would tolerate you if you could talk," Damian said, bossily, pulling off his sock to inspect the damage to his foot. Calluses were already beginning to build, and though he'd done a good job picking around the rock to walk though thickest patches of grass, he was getting out of the grassy region and had a stretch of rocky crags against him. If he was lucky, he could scale them no problem, but it still wasn't going to be any nicer on his feet.
"What's your deal, anyway?" Damian asked, chancing a sniff at his sock. Eeugh. He stuffed it in his pocket and pulled off the other. "Is it because I'm talking to you? Are you just lonely? Then you shouldn't have decided to live in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, Lump."
He scrounged around the area for a bit more to see if he could find any food, but save grass and a few sketchy looking unknown berries on a bushel, there was nothing to be found. He tried to feed the Lump some of the berries, but when the Lump refused, he decided it wasn't worth the risk that they were poisonous. He did manage to scrounge some rainwater from a creek, though, and despite the unfiltered taste, it was better than nothing.
"If I were as ugly as you, I would exile myself, too, though."
Damian scowled, putting his horrible socks back on.
"I'll keep that in mind as a suggestion for Stephanie. You two may be related."
The Lump gave another whuff, climbing to its feet.
"That's what I thought."
And on the one-sided conversation went.
To Damian's disappointment the Lump had managed the crags better than he did; despite its short legs, it was apparently very capable of climbing up the rocky surfaces, and Damian was often forced to look up to see the Lump looking down at him. Damian found it condescending, and he informed the Lump of it.
"I'm going to push you off the cliff if you keep doing that," Damian replied.
By evening, the temperature was dropping. Damian thought his toes might be falling off or at least changing colour, but upon checking they didn't look too different. His fingers were a different story; despite pulling his arms into the chest of the hoodie and folding them across his body, tucking his hands in his armpits, they looked off and felt stiff. The breeze kept catching his hood and trying to push it off his head, and with his arms in his hoodie, it wasn't easy to try and right it.
"From now on I'm sleeping in a parka and boots, in case this EVER happens again," he complained, though he kept on going.
At one point, he gave up walking and attempted to climb onto the Lump's back, thinking if it hadn't attempted to kill him yet it was docile enough to ride, but after a half-dozen failed attempts Damian decided it was a lost cause. Clearly the animal was too stupid, and probably wouldn't go in the right direction anyway.
"If Mother controlled this world, she would have left a motorbike or a jet in the region so I wouldn't have to walk it," Damian informed the Lump. "One that works in the Dead Zone. But who cares now? I might die out here and it's all your fault."
Just before night fell, Damian decided to risk the cold and stop, seeing as his only other option was walking barefoot in the dark. He found an area with a couple rocks that could block out most of the wind, and with some branches and twigs from some nearby trees, he managed to make a small campfire. He found a nest in the tree, but there were no eggs in it, so that was useless. With the Lump curled up a dozen feet away, Damian settled down in the dirt and curled up for warmth, cursing the big furry moron for not being his giant pillow.
"Not that I'd sleep on a giant fleabitten nag anyway," Damian growled, shivering.
Day Two (Wednesday, Nov. 10th.)
Luckily, he lived to see dawn. Even luckier, he decided, was that the Lump had disappeared, and he was now free to talk to himself, rather than to a big ugly llama-rhinoceros-sheep creature.
"Good riddance," he announced to his campsite, poking at the cold ashes of the fire with a stick before twisting his socks around so the tops were on the bottom, and the hole-stricken bottoms were on the top. "I never liked you anyway."
A couple hours past morning, he had found another creek, and had successfully caught himself a fish from it, using only a bit of stealth and a stick he'd sharpened by breaking it off a tree at an angle. The fish was bright blue and skinny, but it tasted okay once cooked, despite being a little ashy and bland. It certainly wasn't Count Chocula or an omelette or sausages, though, and Damian was pretty bitter about that.
He spent most of the early afternoon in silence, save the odd shouted complaint to the sky of "I HATE THIS PLACE" or "YOU ALL SUCK" or "THIS IS THE STUPIDEST THING EVER."
It felt cathartic, especially when he wanted nothing more than to climb into his actual bed, have some real food, and see some real people.
By evening he was sufficiently bored of the same kind of landscapes, as beautiful as they supposedly were, and his feet were close to bloody at this point. He just wanted to kill something out of frustration.
That's when he saw the guy in the Iron suit.
Damian ducked under the shade of the nearest crag, moving a bit faster than he should have over the rocks. Crouched in the shadow with his head low, he peered up at the Ironman flying overhead. Male, he decided, given the stature and size. He could hear some sort of communication going on, but with the distance between them and the sound of the repulsers, Damian wasn't sure what was being said.
Even so, he hoped he didn't find out, if it meant not getting in a scrap with the Ironman.
But, luckily for Damian, the Ironman kept flying on after circling the region once. He waited an extra few minutes, anyhow, partially to let the Ironman get out of the region, and also to strip off his hoodie and his t-shirt. The hoodie went back on, and he tore the t-shirt up into strips to make bandages for his feet.
"Could have offered a ride," Damian growled, watching the white fabric turn red under his heel and the balls of his feet. He wrapped an extra layer of t-shirt on top of that. "And people think I'm rude."
Truth be told, Damian didn't know where the border was in relation to him, so he wasn't sure when he crossed it, but as night fell and he was faced with a small mountain range, he was hoping it was the one that divided him from the castle.
It wasn't. After one grueling hour in near-darkness, carefully climbing the rock face, he found himself looking down into more fields, stretching on for what looked like an eternity.
He let out a growl of frustration. There was nothing up there to make a campfire with, and no shelter, so he was forced to spent another hour working his way down the other side. Once there he was so exhausted and dehydrated that he felt lightheaded, and he just nodded off to sleep in the long grass at the bottom of the foothills.
Day Three (Thursday, Nov. 11th.)
Damian awoke come sunrise, and though exhaustion had allowed him to claim a good number of hours of sleep, it certainly hadn't been comfortable, nor restful.
After laying there and staring at the sky for a bit, he forced himself to sit up. If he didn't find another source of water soon he was going to collapse. He could do without food, as long as he could find water.
His mind was beginning to feel dull. He sat there for another moment, going over possible survival plans, and then realized that his sleeve was red. For one panicked, mind-rushed second he thought he was bleeding, but then he realized it was darker, and mottled, like he'd just laid down in something.
And he had. Closer inspection to the ground showed him the entire ground at the base of the grass' roots was covered in a fine dark red powder.
Like the powder in the region around Paradisa.
Had he managed to get across the border after all?
"Perfect," Damian mumbled, climbing to his feet entirely and shuffling back towards the foothills. Morning dew would leave the rocks of the mountains wet, and if he was lucky, some of it would pool. Grasshoppers bounded by his feet as he cut through the grass, and for a second he was tempted to eat them for a bit of sustenance, though he realized the energy he'd expend trying to catch them wasn't worth the pay-off.
(Good, too, because that was disgusting.)
The rocks' crevices yielded enough water to keep him alive and conscious, though Damian knew it wouldn't be enough overall. By time he'd found a few places with little puddles of water and slicked some out of a couple plants, the sun was already rising in the sky and he knew the rest would be drying up in no time. He had to keep moving, and hopefully build another fire to send up smoke with, though the area was still so damp and slim on trees that he doubted he'd be able to start a fire, let alone make it big enough to create something noticeable.
"Dear Paradisa," he dictated to himself, despite not having a journal. "You really need to stop doing stupid things like this, or else you need to kick out the creeps you're filling this place with. I would rather take on every villain in this place with a TOOTHPICK than play this stupid game."
And that was true.
Damian was almost at a limp when noon rolled around, and every muscle in his body ached, and he was tired, and hungry, and thirsty, and all those complaints one generally has when they're on day three of the great walk back. He'd covered somewhere between sixty-five and seventy miles, he guessed, and in good time.
Even though it took up precious energy, he shouted out, just for the sake of it:
"AM I THERE YET?"
Given the open air and fields ahead of him, no. He wasn't.
What then?